Published>Thu, Sep 30 10 06:19 AM
With a world champion team and with one of its leading rivals not allowed in the competition, Samoa is banking on the rugby sevens competition to provide its first Commonwealth Games gold medal. The two-day Commonwealth Games tournament, which draws together most of the best sevens teams in the world, has garnered more significance this year as a distant prelude to 2016 when rugby sevens will become an Olympic sport for the first time.
Most teams may already have begun to scent Olympic gold and New Delhi offers a chance to test themselves in a games environment. The Samoan team, led by International Rugby Board Player of the Year Mikaele Pesamino and Coach of the Year Stephen Betham, captured the IRB world sevens title in 2010, winning four of eight tournaments in the series including the most prestigious in Hong Kong.
That success gives Samoa strong claims to the gold medal in New Delhi, although it will have to overcome defending champion New Zealand, who have been gold medalists at all three games since sevens was introduced in 1998.
The New Zealand team may have been further strengthened by the inclusion of All Blacks Zac Guildford, Hosea Gear, Ben Smith and Liam Messam and will start as gold medal favorite. Samoa had a serious setback when veteran playmaker Uale Mai signed a contract to play for the El Salvador club in Spain and was forced to quit its squad. Mai has been one of the key figures in Samoan sevens for many years and his defection is a heavy blow.
The sevens team may be not only Samoa's but the Pacific Islands' best gold medal hope in New Delhi - and the first for a Pacific island nation since 2002 - though Samoa has high hopes for weightlifting sisters Ele and Mary Opeloge. New Zealand's preparation for the Commonwealth Games sevens competition has been disrupted by injury, the most serious of which was to All Black backrower Adam Thomson but also affected captain D.J. Forbes, Gear and playmaker Tomasi Cama. Tietjens seldom has the luxury of selecting All Blacks for his sevens squads and the availability of Gear, Messam, Smith and Guildford significantly strengthens the New Zealand team, though they lack sevens experience.
"The game is made for guys like Hosea, Zac and Ben but the first thing 15s players assume is that there's a lot more space. It's not as easy as that," captain Forbes said. "There's a lot of work to be done and a lot of skill sets that evolve through playing a lot of sevens," he added.
Source: Web Search
0 comments:
Post a Comment